PETA has undergone a promotional campaign to make people more empathetic towards fish by calling them ’sea kittens’.
“PETA thought that by renaming fish sea kittens, compassionate people who would never dream of hurting a dog or a cat might extend that sympathy to fish, or sea kittens,” PETA campaign coordinator Ashley Byrne says.
However when asked why they didn’t just rebrand kittens as ‘land fish’ PETA had no comment.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=99249669
I watched ‘The Happening’ this morning. That movie is hilarious, I didn’t think it was possible for people to be that bad at acting. One thing to come from the movie however was that it spurred me to look up information on Colony Collapse Disorder.
It’s a very mysterious phenomena affecting honeybees across the world in which otherwise healthy colonies stop eating & eventually disappear. That may not sound like such a big deal, but bees play a very important role in the planet’s ecosystems. They’re one of the only pollinators that can be mass utilized for commercial crops.
Theories as to why this is happening are varied and nothing more than speculative. My current operating theory is that shortly after the release of ‘Bee Movie’, bees realized they were douche bags & started to kill themselves.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colony_Collapse_Disorder
The United States Senate today voted to protect upwards of two-million aces in nine states. The move was largely criticised by Republican Senators claiming that the bill didn’t properly have amendments to allow oil & natural gas exploration on the lands.
Because apparently when you declare public lands you should only do so if there is financial incentive.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090112/ap_on_go_co/congress_wilderness
Have you ever heard of the ‘early anthropocene hypothesis’? Well neither had I until this morning when I came across its glory after scouring Wikipedia aimlessly.
It’s generally assumed that human CO2 emissions began in earnest after the industrial revolution brought us the factory line & coal based power. The Early Anthropocene Hypothesis suggests however that the human race first started to have a significant impact on climate much earlier than previously thought. Beginning as early as 8,000 years ago our ancestors participated in destructive farming activities, along with widespread deforestation particularly in Europe.
I’m sure the hypothesis has many detractors, people have a hard enough time wrapping their head around the concept that we can affect the climate in this 21st century let alone that we could have thousands of years ago. Nonetheless I find myself very intrigued. I wonder if being destructive to our environment is innate in our nature, and if we’ll ever be able to correct our actions.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Early_anthropocene
Time Magazine is exposing the myth of clean coal. Just like those commercials that are airing which also expose the myth of clean coal. So now I have decided to quite inventively expose the myth of clean coal.
‘Clean Coal’ is the term used to describe the current modernisation at many of the nation’s coal fired power plants. Plants all across the country are spending billions of dollars installing scrubbers to limit the amount of sulfur dioxide & mercury emitted. But they’ve not really done anything to limit the amount of CO2 that is produced. That of course being one of the largest concerns over coal power.
http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1870599,00.html
I wouldn’t put too much stock into the following article. Firstly the person writing the article seems to ignore the fact that we are currently in an ice age. If anything what he’s trying to reference is a coming glacial period. But to assume that everything is on some sort of timer & every interglacial period lasts an exact amount of years irrespective of outside influence is a pretty absurd idea.
The article also seems to reference vague studies from several decades ago when the prevailing scientific thought was that a glacial period was imminent. New studies however suggest that if current CO2 projections hold up our current interglacial period might last for another 50,000 years. Even if they drop we’re still talking tens of thousands of years.
The suggestion that we should all be frantically preparing for a global ice age has now been rendered moot. I said good day.
http://english.pravda.ru/science/earth/106922-earth_ice_age-0
As it turns out George Bush doesn’t hate black people, or at least it seems that way as evidenced by the following story.
Now I’m sure Bush will be remembered for the countless numbers of mistakes he has made while in office, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t also recognize his few achievements. One of which has been maybe the most progressive Africa agenda of any U.S. President in history.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090111/ap_on_re_af/af_bush_s_africa_legacy
The European Union is taking steps to ban the ownership of large screen plasma televisions citing concerns over their energy consumption. In their estimations on average a 42 inch plasma television consumes 822 kilowatt hours per year in contrast to the 350 kilowatt hours by an LCD screen television of equal size.
A recently released study suggests that for every Google search 7 grams of CO2 are generated. And with 200 Million searches a day taking place on that one website alone, that’s a lot of CO2. I have to say this really takes the wind out of my attempts at environmentalism because I’m pretty sure I use Google 8 million times a day.
Google apparently consumes more energy than other websites because of the way their servers are set up for optimized speed. Adding some mystery to it all Google refuses to release their energy consumption figures causing people to wonder whether they leave the lights on when they’re not even there. They probably do.
http://technology.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/tech_and_web/article5489134.ece
President Bush today established the largest marine conservation area in history. Over three hundred thousand square kilometres in the Pacific (including the depths of the Mariana Trench) will now be protected as national monuments. This status will protect the waters from commercial fishing as well as oil & natural gas exploration.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090106/ap_on_go_pr_wh/bush_marine_conservation